Tomasi was an open-minded sort, characteristic of his mother's sense of life. She had a broader sense of life and culture than most Sicilianaristocrats of her day, and with Tomasi being a bit of a handful as a youngster, she was the only one able to keep him under control. After the war, he spent some time travelling both alone and accompanied by his mother, around Italy and across Europe. In contrast, Tomasi shared a rather coldrelationship with his father. The family had once been wealthy, but most of this wealth was in property, and was lost earlier (before his birth?).

Of all the places Tomasi had visited in his travels, his most cherished place was the westward isle of England where he met his wife Alexandra. His time in England gave him opportunity to nurture his love for English literature and culture, as well as a break from the increasingly constrained environment of Fascist Italy. Being an aristocrat with first-hand knowledge of Britain, his experiences were beyond that of most Italians, and because of this knowledge, he was not regarded in good terms by many of those who were gaining power in Italy. Despite the Fascist regime's obsessive suspicion of Italy's English-speaking intellectuals, and their ban on the study of English, Tomasi's life in back Palermo was not disturbed, probably because he wasn't there for much of the time, and because his views were rarely made public.

Tomasi was seen as a conservative, probably because he didn't make his views heard. Letters sent home during World War I show he held a somewhat pacifist view towards the war effort, but his convictions were not of the extent that he would choose to desert the army.

To paraphrase Lanza Tomasi:

"Lampedusa has been painted as a conservative, but it was not so. He did vote to retain the monarchy in the 1946 referendum. After that I think he voted for the Christian Democrats. But he was familiar with Marx, he studied Lenin, Croce and Gramsci. And he believed in the French Revolution. Although he was famous as a chronicler of the aristocracy, he felt that the guillotining of Louis XVI was 'The best chopping off of a head in history'. He was convinced that history had to move forwards through a massive shock every so often."